NY Times

An Incumbent This Time, Clinton Is Keeping a Lower Campaign Profile

By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
Published: August 15, 2006
At this point in 2000, it was difficult for New Yorkers to miss Hillary Rodham Clinton, who buzzed around the state attacking her Republican rival in a flurry of campaign appearances and television advertisements as she sought to become the only first lady to capture a seat in Congress.

This time around, though, Mrs. Clinton, who is seeking re-election this fall to another term in the Senate, is not nearly as great a presence on the campaign trail, even taking time out last Tuesday to travel to Chicago, where she addressed members of the nation’s largest public service union.

There is an unmistakable air of confidence that has settled in around Mrs. Clinton’s campaign these days.

The difference between then and now, of course, is that Mrs. Clinton is an incumbent with solid approval ratings, huge sums of campaign cash, a record of accomplishments in the Senate — and a deeply divided Republican opposition.

In a sign of how things have changed, Mrs. Clinton embarked on her first major campaign tour only last week, about a month before the Sept. 12 primary, trolling for support over two days in the heart of her political base, New York City. She has yet to run campaign advertisements, even though she had released a number of them by this time in her first race, one that began 18 months before Election Day.

The stakes are decidedly different today than they were in 2000. Mrs. Clinton and her advisers are keenly aware that she must win decisively if she wants to mount a credible run for the presidency in 2008. Democrats in and out of the Clinton camp have said that it would be difficult for her to launch a national campaign with a shaky base of support back home.

In 2000, Mrs. Clinton faced Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who withdrew from the contest in mid-May after the collapse of his marriage and after he learned he had prostate cancer. Representative Rick A. Lazio of Long Island replaced the mayor as Mrs. Clinton’s opponent. Both were extremely well financed.

Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Lazio attacked Mrs. Clinton for seeking office in a state where she had never lived before the election, attempting to fueling suspicions that she was merely seeking to turn New York into a platform for an eventual national campaign as she and her husband prepared to leave the White House.

Now, though, the Republicans are too busy feuding among themselves to effectively challenge Mrs. Clinton. Last week offered a stark reminder of this. As Mrs. Clinton campaigned around New York, the two little-known Republicans seeking to challenge her in the fall — Kathleen Troia McFarland, a former official in the Reagan-era Pentagon, and John Spencer, a former mayor of Yonkers, clashed in a debate with accusations of marital infidelity, nepotism and other personal attacks. Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic surrogates pounced, saying the debate resembled “a Tom and Jerry cartoon.”

Not taking things too much for granted, Mrs. Clinton ramped up her campaign last week with her New York City tour, and yesterday she made campaign appearances in the Albany area.

To the degree the senator faces any potential problems, it is from within her party. Mrs. Clinton is facing a primary challenge from an antiwar candidate, Jonathan Tasini, who is trying to harness frustration among liberals over the senator’s refusal to renounce her vote in 2002 authorizing President Bush to use military force in Iraq.

No serious political strategist thinks Mr. Tasini has any shot at defeating Mrs. Clinton. But if he has a strong showing in the primary, that would suggest that Mrs. Clinton is not as strong a figure with the party’s base as is widely believed.

In turn, Mrs. Clinton’s opponents in the Democratic Party would surely cite that as evidence of the obstacles she might face in 2008 with Democratic presidential primary voters, who tend to be more liberal than the Democratic electorate as a whole.

But Mr. Tasini’s attack on her war position, which he has for months predicted would undercut her with the party’s base, does not appear to be catching on. Poll after poll shows that her popularity among Democrats is as strong as ever.

That may be why an outspoken antiwar critic like Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of Harlem, seemed coy about discussing Mr. Tasini’s campaign, even as he expressed satisfaction with the results of last week’s Democratic primary in Connecticut, where Senator Joseph I. Lieberman was defeated by a candidate who ran a campaign attacking the senator’s support for the war.

“You may think I am putting you on, but I have no clue who is opposing Senator Clinton,” Mr. Rangel said in an interview with WNYC-AM during an appearance with Mrs. Clinton in Harlem. “I didn’t even know she had a primary. That’s interesting. What’s his name again?’’